Suddenly the engine bumped, and the wheels screeched, iron against iron as the engine backed up a few inches. White lights flashed in his eyes, and the engine howled in his ears. The engineer paused to gather up power, and in that moment Hook realized that the brace had loosened.
If only he could make it between the wheels in time, life lay but a few feet away. Reaching up, he caught the frame with his prosthesis and pulled with everything he had. He slid between the wheels and rolled out onto his side. Muscle spasms jerked up his body as he scrambled into the shadows. The engineer’s profile lit against the cab instrument lights as the engine growled off down track.
For several minutes Hook waited in the darkness, his life returning with each gulp of oxygen. Barney could not have gotten far. He had to be somewhere out there in the yards.
From there, Hook could see the roundhouse, the machine shop, and the turntable cabin. When he spotted a shadow slipping past the dingy window of the machine shop, he cocked his P.38.
Holding his arm against his ribs, he slipped through the darkness. Ducking low, he moved into the machine shop and squatted in the shadows to wait for his eyes to adjust. Empty of employees, the building creaked and settled in the coolness. Great lathes and grinders lined the walls. Belts shot down from the maze of overhead pulleys mounted in the high reaches of the ceiling. Driver wheels and trailing trucks stretched down the walls, along with smoke boxes, boilers, and mammoth-sized tools. Babbitt and lead vats smoldered, their smells acrid in the still evening air.
He stepped into the light just as Barney came from behind a drill press. He came with murder in his eyes, the full force of his weight, and hit Hook in his midsection. Pain exploded up Hook’s rib cage, and his lungs emptied. His P.38 spun out onto the machine-shop floor.
Barney, stinking of sour and whiskey, buried his head into Hook’s belly. His hat fell away as he struggled to tip Hook off-balance, shoving him back again and again with his legs. Sweat soaked the collar of his shirt and glistened on his neck.
Hook squared off to counter the attack. Barney fought to encircle him, to crush him into submission, but the booze had taken its toll.
Hook thrust Barney back on his heels. “It’s time for a fishing lesson,” he said.
Barney snarled, and he charged in again and then again. But with each failed attempt, his strength lessened, and his determination waned. He gasped for air, and his eyes rolled as he struggled to focus on Hook.
Each time, Hook countered the attack, sidestepping, moving just out of reach, forcing him to expend his energy even more. Water dripped from Barney’s nose, and his face reddened in the yellow lights of the shop.
Gathering up his resolve, Barney rushed Hook full bore. But this time Hook came in straight and yanked his prosthesis up into Barney’s crotch. Barney’s eyes widened, and his scream reverberated within the confines of the machine shop. Hook leaned in close to Barney’s ear.
“First, bait the hook,” he said.
Hook cuffed Barney and rolled him onto his back. Barney pulled his knees into his stomach and issued strange barking noises. Spittle drooled from his mouth, and his face churned with blood.
Hook searched him for a weapon and found a pistol tucked in his belt. He wondered why carry a firearm and not use it? But when he held the weapon under the lights, he understood why. No sane man draws a Roy Rogers cap gun in the middle of a fight.
* * *
When Frenchy coupled in, Hook rolled out of the bunk, his ribs protesting. He’d spent the better part of the night getting Barney situated in the local jail. The cops pointed out that anything more serious than resisting-arrest charges would probably be in vain, since toting a Roy Rogers cap pistol failed the attempted-murder charge even in Texas. They further advised that blaming the incident on some blue flag, or even a red flag for that matter, would most likely result in a jury laughing off its collective ass.
Hook declined Frenchy’s invitation to ride in the engine cab, deciding instead to stay in the caboose. Frenchy shrugged and lit up his cigar.
“I ain’t stopping for that dang dog, Hook. If he falls off, it’s just good-bye Mixer.”
“Mixer’s been riding this caboose damn near as long as you’ve been railroading and without half the complaining.”
“And I ain’t hauling dead bodies up and down the line no more either,” he said. “You want to ride my train, you have to be alive.”
“Tell that to the bakehead,” Hook said.
“And this here train don’t go into Carmen, as you know.”
“Side me off in Avard. And while you’re at it, maybe you can arrange for the Frisco to take me on into Carmen. I hear they’re less particular about helping a man out.”
“That’s ’cause hauling wheat cars back and forth fifty miles a day with a bobtail don’t make for a real railroad.”
“Right,” Hook said. “When you coming back through?”
“You wanting a free ride home, too, I suppose?”
“I don’t know yet how long this is going to take. I’ll check in with Popeye from time to time. In the meantime, maybe you can side me off someplace quiet in Avard.”
Frenchy puffed on his cigar. “There ain’t no other kind of place in Avard,” he said.
* * *
Hook slept for a couple of hours, secure in the clack of the wheels as Frenchy’s steamer lumbered through the night. When he woke, he climbed into the cupola to see if he could make out their location. The sky spilled over with stars, and the moon sat on the horizon like a fat pumpkin, but not a sign or light to place him in the world.
He rubbed at the soreness in his ribs and made a mental note to never climb under another engine for any reason whatsoever.
He wondered if Jackie had made it home, and if she had, whether she would stay there. Her infatuation with Barney’s big talk might well draw her back into a life of crime.
He figured that Barney, too, would soon enough return to business as usual. But unlike some crooks Hook had encountered on the rails, Barney’s taste for violence didn’t extend much beyond moving stop-flags and brandishing his Roy Rogers cap gun.
Even though moving that flag could have been lethal, he figured Barney’s actions stemmed more from panic than intent to murder. After all, no one carried a cap pistol for anything more than a prop. In the end, the more disturbing proposition for Hook lay in the likelihood that whoever took that potshot at him still remained at large.
There’d been no shortage of enemies for Hook over the years, and they never made life easy. But at least he’d known who they were and what their motivations might be. In this case, he knew neither.
* * *
When they’d stopped at Avard, Frenchy said, “A Frisco switch engine comes in for those wheat cars over there in the mornings. Without an order the engineer can’t legally run you into Carmen. Been my experience that it’s hell seeing past the third hopper car, though.”
“There’s a rule against hopping trains, Frenchy, or didn’t you know?”
“I got to go before this gets any deeper,” Frenchy said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Hook stood on the platform and watched Frenchy’s engine disappear. Mixer jumped down and headed off into the weeds. He circled wide, marking his territory as he went. The afternoon sun beat down, and heat waves quivered up from the tracks.
Mixer soon returned, his tongue hanging out. Hook filled his food and water dishes and set them outside near the casket. Mixer lapped his water before curling up in the shade.
From the siding, Hook could see the wheat elevators, concrete fortresses rising into the sky. Beyond them sat the spare buildings of Avard, a town failed from the Depression and the ravages of tornadoes, hell-bent screamers that bore in with regularity to destroy everything in their paths. Each time, the residents rebuilt the town, only for it to be torn asunder once again. Now, no one any longer cared.
Hook dug the Bronze Star out of the shoe box he kept pushed behind the coal stove. Dropping it in his pocket, h
e headed for town. Main Street, being no more than a dirt road a couple blocks long, had a general store at its end. A small hotel stood across the street, a structure built so close to the tracks that the railroad mounted its mail hook just outside the back door. By not making a full stop, the railroad saved both fuel and time for more important stops farther along the way.
Next to the hotel, a tin shed leaned to the south, the remains of a once-active blacksmith shop. The door hung at an angle from the top hinge, and a streak of light shot through the hole in the roof.
Hook peered into the blackness and could see the anvil still mounted on a walnut stump and the forge with remnants of cinders in its hearth. The smell of heat and sweat still resided in the soot and in the packed-earth floor.
A sign on the front door of the hotel read EAT. Hook dusted off his britches and went in. A single light shone from the kitchen, and a fan hummed from an opened window. He found a booth, its vinyl cover cracked with age and wear, and sat down.
A little girl in the back booth, ten or eleven, he calculated, sucked on a straw to make noises with her drink. Her yellow hair lay in matted curls about her face, and a wad of bubble gum clung to the side of her empty plate.
Bobbing her foot, she relocated her straw in the ice and sucked up the last of the contents. She wore oxford slippers with scuffed toes, and her socks drooped from weakened elastic. A scab on her knee, the size of a half-dollar, testified to some recent mishap. She watched Hook through her hair.
The cook, a woman in her fifties, ducked her head under the serving window.
“What will you have?” she asked.
“Burger and fries,” Hook said. “Coke.”
She turned to her stove without answering. Hook looked around for something to read, finding an auction bill lying on top of the high chair next to the front door. He searched in vain for books.
Pretty soon the little girl got up, went into the kitchen, and came back with her glass refilled. She sat in the booth, her chin in her hand, and nursed the straw.
The cook arrived with his burger, a mountain of fries, ketchup, and a bottle of Tabasco. Lines drew at the corners of her eyes, and her hands shook with tremor.
“Anything else?” she asked, writing out his ticket.
“No, thanks,” Hook said. “What’s going on in town tonight?”
She tore off his ticket and dropped it on the table. “Oh, just the normal things, a parade at six and then a ball after. We’re expecting the king and queen to show up about seven.”
“Right,” Hook said, turning to his burger, which tasted as good as anything he’d eaten in a month, including the Harvey House fare.
By the time he tabbed out, the sun had slipped lower on the horizon. He paused outside to watch a westbound thunder by. It rattled the front windows of the hotel and sent dust spiraling off down Main.
He walked toward the caboose, taking his time to enjoy the quiet and peace. Iron-red hills jutted into the sunset, and a flock of blackbirds banked away like kamikazes. He stopped and lit a cigarette, and that’s when he noticed her standing back a hundred feet or so behind him. She still carried her drink and had transferred her bubble gum from plate to mouth.
Hook went on to the caboose and sat down on the steps. She stopped at a distance, but when Mixer joined him, she idled on up to the caboose.
“Hello,” Hook said.
“Hello.”
“You live here?”
She nodded. “My name’s Bet Haimes. That was my daddy’s name. I live with my grandma at the hotel. Sometimes I’m the waitress when she gets sick.”
“That so?” he said.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Hook.”
“Oh. Is that your dog?”
“His name’s Mixer.”
“That’s a funny name,” she said. “I had a cat named Felix, but the train ran over him. I found his tail.”
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“Yeah. Did a train run over your arm?”
“No.”
She stretched her bubble gum out and ate it back to her fingers. “What’s in the box?”
Hook turned. “That?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s a body,” he said.
“What’s its name?”
“Samuel Ash.”
She took Mixer’s ear and felt the scars in it.
“His ears are icky.”
“He likes to fight,” Hook said.
She sat down next to Hook on the steps and bobbed her legs.
“You smoke a lot, don’t you?” she said.
“It’s a bad habit.”
“Yeah. What are you going to do with Samuel Ash?”
“I’m taking him home to Carmen soon as I find his people.”
“One time I hid in the culvert under the tracks when the train went over,” she said.
“That’s dangerous,” he said.
“Yeah.”
She climbed up on the caboose porch and looked at the casket.
“Does Samuel Ash want to go home?”
“Everyone wants to go home,” he said.
“I don’t,” she said. “That’s why I live with my grandma.” She wiped at her nose. “How do you know Samuel Ash is in there?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
She climbed down. “I don’t know. I got to go now and help Grandma with the dishes.”
“Listen,” he said, “I’m going on to Carmen tomorrow and will be gone a few days. Do you think you could feed and water Mixer for me?”
“For a dollar,” she said.
“Okay, for a dollar. I’ll leave the door to the caboose open.”
“Are you taking Samuel Ash?”
“Not yet. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“I’m not,” she said, turning. “Bye, Hook. Bye, Mixer. Bye, Samuel Ash.”
23
HOOK WAITED BY the grain elevator until the next to the last hopper car rolled by before he swung up on the ladder. He crawled into the opening over the trailing wheel truck and secured a place to sit. While not the most comfortable spot to ride, he didn’t have that far to go.
The old switch engine chugged downline at a slow clip. Within a few minutes, they’d moved into the countryside, an expanse of wheat fields reaching to the horizons. The wheat, nearing harvest time, rippled off in waves of gold from the train’s turbulence. Soon combines would move in like giant insects and chew their way across the landscape.
Within the hour, the short haul approached Carmen, and the engineer blew his whistle. From where Hook sat, he could see the elevators rising into the blue sky. The train slowed, and Hook maneuvered to the side of the hopper car to bail off.
A great building rose up to the north, a grand and elegant structure isolated from the town proper. A sign out front read, SPIRIT OF AGAPE ORPHANAGE.
Hook counted four floors, including the basement, and, sitting atop of it all, a turret with windows encircling its circumference. Steps, bolstered by Greek columns, ran from ground level to the first floor, where a carved wooden door awaited entry.
A picketed balcony rested atop the columns, with the entire structure repeating itself and extending yet again to the next floor. In spite of the building’s splendor, no life moved about in the yard, and the windows lay darkened and gloomy.
Behind the house, a dairy barn stretched the length of the grounds. Its cedar roof sported two cupolas, and a half-dozen bay windows ran down its length. Two silos with conical tops rose from the barn’s east end, and the entire southern exposure opened onto a maze of corrals churning with matched Holstein cows.
As the short haul slowed to uncouple the hoppers at the grain elevator, Hook jumped off and headed into town. A filling station sat on the corner across from the newspaper office, and down the street, a small grocery store touted sale prices in its window. A cobbler’s shop, with weathered sign, huddled near the back of the end lot. The town café, funeral parlor, and a beer joint with painte
d windows made up the remainder of downtown. A block over, three church steeples all rose up within shouting range of heaven.
Hook found the proprietor of the filling station sitting out front on a bus seat that had been bolted to the concrete drive. His hat bill, covered with greasy fingerprints, stuck out over one ear. He clamped an RC Cola between his legs and poured a package of peanuts into its neck.
When he looked up, he said, “Toilet’s around back. There ain’t no paper, though. Damn kids plug up the stool.”
“Thanks, anyway,” Hook said. “I thought you might give me some information.”
He tipped up his RC and maneuvered some of the peanuts into his mouth. He chewed, pushed his glasses up onto his nose, and took a long look at Hook.
“What happened to your arm?” he asked.
Hook held up his good hand, which still bore cuts from his scrap with Barney.
“A little misunderstanding,” he said.
The proprietor took another swig of his RC and said, “The other one.”
Hook turned over his prosthesis. “Hardly skinned it up at all,” he said.
“Say, you ain’t one of them goddang carnies from the state fair, are you?”
“I’m the Santa Fe railroad bull, which comes mighty close to the same thing,” he said.
“The hell?”
“Have you lived in these parts long?” Hook asked.
“Long enough,” he said.
“You ever know a fellow by the name of Samuel Ash?”
He took another pull of his RC and set the bottle next to him on the bench.
“I knew a Samuel Newsome, ’fore he died of the lockjaw. They fed him gravy with an eyedropper, but it didn’t make no difference.”
“Do you know anyone who might know?”
“Well, there’s Patch Hunter, the cobbler over there. He’s lived here since the parting of the sea. According to Patch, there ain’t much he doesn’t know.
“Then there’s Juice Dawson, the digger. In the end, no one gets by him. And course you got Doc Tooney. Doc’s probably pulled a couple thousand squealers into this world over the years. In the day, wasn’t nothing for a woman to shell out ten, fifteen kids for helping out with the harvesting and chores.”
The Hanging of Samuel Ash Page 16